The big feature here is that current undocumented immigrants in the United States with otherwise clean legal records could achieve legal residency after paying a fine and back taxes. But a path to full citizenship would only be offered after measures to prevent further illegal immigration are in place.

The proposal also includes new border security, more stringent checks on immigrants with visas, and programs to help businesses verify the legal status of their employees.

We recognize that our immigration system is broken. And while border security has improved significantly over the last two Administrations, we still don’t have a functioning immigration system. This has created a situation where up to 11 million undocumented immigrants are living in the shadows. Our legislation acknowledges these realities by finally committing the resources needed to secure the border, modernize and streamline our current legal immigration system, while creating a tough but fair legalization program for individuals who are currently here. We will ensure that this is a successful permanent reform to our immigration system that will not need to be revisited.

Four Basic Legislative Pillars:

1. Create a tough but fair path to citizenship for unauthorized immigrants currently living in the United States that is contingent upon securing our borders and tracking whether legal immigrants have left the country when required;

2. Reform our legal immigration system to better recognize the importance of characteristics that will help build the American economy and strengthen American families;

3. Create an effective employment verification system that will prevent identity theft and end the hiring of future unauthorized workers; and,

1. Creating a Path to Citizenship for Unauthorized Immigrants Already Here that is Contingent Upon Securing the Border and Combating Visa Overstays

- Our legislation will provide a tough, fair, and practical roadmap to address the status of unauthorized immigrants in the United States that is contingent upon our success in securing our borders and addressing visa overstays.

- To fulfill the basic governmental function of securing our borders, we will continue the increased efforts of the Border Patrol by providing them with the latest technology, infrastructure, and personnel needed to prevent, detect, and apprehend every unauthorized entrant.

- Additionally, our legislation will increase the number of unmanned aerial vehicles and surveillance equipment, improve radio interoperability and increase the number of agents at and between ports of entry. The purpose is to substantially lower the number of successful illegal border crossings while continuing to facilitate commerce.

- We will strengthen prohibitions against racial profiling and inappropriate use of force, enhance the training of border patrol agents, increase oversight, and create a mechanism to ensure a meaningful opportunity for border communities to share input, including critiques.

- Our legislation will require the completion of an entry-exit system that tracks whether all persons entering the United States on temporary visas via airports and seaports have left the country as required by law.

- We recognize that Americans living along the Southwest border are key to recognizing and understanding when the border is truly secure. Our legislation will create a commission comprised of governors, attorneys general, and community leaders living along the Southwest border to monitor the progress of securing our border and to make a recommendation regarding when the bill’s security measures outlined in the legislation are completed.

- While these security measures are being put into place, we will simultaneously require those who came or remained in the United States without our permission to register with the government. This will include passing a background check and settling their debt to society by paying a fine and back taxes, in order to earn probationary legal status, which will allow them to live and work legally in the United States. Individuals with a serious criminal background or others who pose a threat to our national security will be ineligible for legal status and subject to deportation. Illegal immigrants who have committed serious crimes face immediate deportation.

- We will demonstrate our commitment to securing our borders and combating visa overstays by requiring our proposed enforcement measures be complete before any immigrant on probationary status can earn a green card.

- Current restrictions preventing non-immigrants from accessing federal public benefits will also apply to lawful probationary immigrants.

- Once the enforcement measures have been completed, individuals with probationary legal status will be required to go to the back of the line of prospective immigrants, pass an additional background check, pay taxes, learn English and civics, demonstrate a history of work in the United States, and current employment, among other requirements, in order to earn the opportunity to apply for lawful permanent residency. Those individuals who successfully complete these requirements can eventually earn a green card.

- Individuals who are present without lawful status – not including people within the two categories identified below – will only receive a green card after every individual who is already waiting in line for a green card, at the time this legislation is enacted, has received their green card. Our purpose is to ensure that no one who has violated America’s immigration laws will receive preferential treatment as they relate to those individuals who have complied with the law.

- Our legislation also recognizes that the circumstances and the conduct of people without lawful status are not the same, and cannot be addressed identically.

For instance, individuals who entered the United States as minor children did not knowingly choose to violate any immigration laws. Consequently, under our proposal these individuals will not face the same requirements as other individuals in order to earn a path to citizenship.

Similarly, individuals who have been working without legal status in the United States agricultural industry have been performing very important and difficult work to maintain America’s food supply while earning subsistence wages. Due to the utmost importance in our nation maintaining the safety of its food supply, agricultural workers who commit to the long term stability of our nation’s agricultural industries will be treated differently than the rest of the undocumented population because of the role they play in ensuring that Americans have safe and secure agricultural products to sell and consume. These individuals will earn a path to citizenship through a different process under our new agricultural worker program.

2. Improving our Legal Immigration System and Attracting the World’s Best and Brightest

- The development of a rational legal immigration system is essential to ensuring America’s future economic prosperity. Our failure to act is perpetuating a broken system which sadly discourages the world’s best and brightest citizens from coming to the United States and remaining in our country to contribute to our economy. This failure makes a legal path to entry in the United States insurmountably difficult for well-meaning immigrants. This unarguably discourages innovation and economic growth. It has also created substantial visa backlogs which force families to live apart, which incentivizes illegal immigration.

- Our new immigration system must be more focused on recognizing the important characteristics which will help build the American economy and strengthen American families. Additionally, we must reduce backlogs in the family and employment visa categories so that future immigrants view our future legal immigration system as the exclusive means for entry into the United States.

- The United States must do a better job of attracting and keeping the world’s best and brightest. As such, our immigration proposal will award a green card to immigrants who have received a PhD or Master’s degree in science, technology, engineering, or math from an American university. It makes no sense to educate the world’s future innovators and entrepreneurs only to ultimately force them to leave our country at the moment they are most able to contribute to our economy.

3. Strong Employment Verification

- We recognize that undocumented immigrants come to the United States almost exclusively for jobs. As such, dramatically reducing future illegal immigration can only be achieved by developing a tough, fair, effective and mandatory employment verification system. An employment verification system must hold employers accountable for knowingly hiring undocumented workers and make it more difficult for unauthorized immigrants to falsify documents to obtain employment. Employers who knowingly hire unauthorized workers must face stiff fines and criminal penalties for egregious offenses.

- We believe the federal government must provide U.S. employers with a fast and reliable method to confirm whether new hires are legally authorized to work in the United States. This is essential to ensure the effective enforcement of immigration laws.

- Our proposal will create an effective employment verification system which prevents identity theft and ends the hiring of future unauthorized workers. We believe requiring prospective workers to demonstrate both legal status and identity, through non-forgeable electronic means prior to obtaining employment, is essential to an employee verification system; and,

- The employee verification system in our proposal will be crafted with procedural safeguards to protect American workers, prevent identity theft, and provide due process protections.

4. Admitting New Workers and Protecting Workers’ Rights

- The overwhelming majority of the 327,000 illegal entrants apprehended by CBP in FY2011 were seeking employment in the United States. We recognize that to prevent future waves of illegal immigration a humane and effective system needs to be created for these immigrant workers to enter the country and find employment without seeking the aid of human traffickers or drug cartels.

- Our proposal will provide businesses with the ability to hire lower-skilled workers in a timely manner when Americans are unavailable or unwilling to fill those jobs.

Our legislation would:

- Allow employers to hire immigrants if it can be demonstrated that they were unsuccessful in recruiting an American to fill an open position and the hiring of an immigrant will not displace American workers;

- Create a workable program to meet the needs of America’s agricultural industry, including dairy to find agricultural workers when American workers are not available to fill open positions;

- Allow more lower-skilled immigrants to come here when our economy is creating jobs, and fewer when our economy is not creating jobs;

- Protect workers by ensuring strong labor protections; and,

- Permit workers who have succeeded in the workplace and contributed to their communities over many years to earn green cards.

Or maybe the rich business owners could quit giving them jobs without green cards....

This is the problem. Rich down to startup business owners hire these workers. If you start punishing those who hire illegal workers no round up is needed. No jobs this problem gets smaller quickly. We have to be realistic on dealing with many who were born here and grew up here with parents here illegally. Control the boarder cut off the jobs and suddenly we have a manageable problem to deal with~

__________________The Trump campaign and Black Lives Matter movement are perfect for each other. Both sides filled with easily led and angry nitwits convinced they are victims~

Worried about the economy? Then pass immigration reform
Posted by Ezra Klein
on January 31, 2013 at 1:02 pm

Washington tends to have a narrow view of what counts as “economic policy.” Anything we do to the tax code is in. So is any stimulus we pass, or any deficit reduction we try. But most of this mistakes the federal budget for the economy.

The truth is, the most important piece of economic policy we pass — or don’t pass — in 2013 may be something we don’t think of as economic policy at all: immigration reform.

Congress certainly doesn’t consider it economic policy, at least not officially. Immigration laws go through the House and Senate judiciary committees. But consider a few facts about immigrants in the American economy: About a 10th of the U.S. population is foreign-born. More than a quarter of U.S. technology and engineering businesses started from 1995 to 2005 had a foreign-born owner. In Silicon Valley, half of all tech startups had a foreign-born founder. One-quarter of all U.S.-based Nobel laureates of the past 50 years were foreign born. Right now, about half of the PhDs working in science and technology are foreign born.

Immigrants begin businesses and file patents at a much higher rate than their native-born counterparts, and while there are disputes about the effect immigrants have on the wages of low-income Americans, there’s little dispute about their effect on wages overall: They lift them.

The economic case for immigration is best made by way of analogy. Everyone agrees that aging economies with low birth rates are in trouble; this, for example, is a thoroughly conventional view of Japan. It’s even conventional wisdom about the U.S. The retirement of the baby boomers is correctly understood as an economic challenge. The ratio of working Americans to retirees will fall from 5 to 1 today to 3 to 1 in 2050. Fewer workers and more retirees is tough on any economy.

There’s nothing controversial about that analysis. But if that’s not controversial, then immigration shouldn’t be, either. Immigration is essentially the importation of new workers. It’s akin to raising the birth rate, only easier, because most of the newcomers are old enough to work. And because living in the U.S. is considered such a blessing that even very skilled, very industrious workers are willing to leave their home countries and come to ours, the U.S. has an unusual amount to gain from immigration. When it comes to the global draft for talent, we almost always get the first-round picks — at least, if we want them, and if we make it relatively easy for them to come here.

From the vantage of naked self-interest, the wonder isn’t that we might fix our broken immigration system in 2013. It’s that we might not.

Few economic problems wouldn’t be improved by more immigration. If you’re worried about deficits, more young, healthy workers paying into Social Security and Medicare are an obvious boon. If you’re concerned about the slowdown in new company formation and its attendant effects on economic growth, more immigrant entrepreneurs should cheer you. If you’re worried about the dearth of science and engineering majors in our universities, an influx of foreign-born students is the most obvious solution you’ll find.

Politicians of both parties recognize this. “Our goal is to advance policies that make a difference in peoples’ lives, and that means we want to advance pro-growth reforms that are good for the economy,” Republican Rep. Paul Ryan said at a recent Wall Street Journal breakfast. The first pro-growth reform he named? Immigration.

Many immigration opponents lodge a moral objection to “amnesty” — allowing people who broke the law to reap the benefits of legal status. That’s beyond the scope of this particular column. The main economic concern about allowing more immigration or legalizing the status of those who are already here is that immigrants will undermine the wages of the least-skilled Americans. In reality, it’s not clear that will happen.

In addition to growing the size of the national pie, unskilled immigrants tend to have what economists call complementary skills to U.S. workers. If one worker speaks English and another doesn’t, for example, they generally don’t pursue the same job.

In that way, it’s useful again to compare immigration with native birth rates. Increasing the number of native-born workers leads to more direct competition, because two native-born workers are probably more similar than an immigrant and a native worker. Yet most everyone cheers if they hear that the U.S. birth rate has ticked up.

Some workers are hurt by immigration, but they are typically already struggling. The best way to help them is with more training, better health care, a more generous earned income tax credit and so on. Those benefits are easier to provide in a growing economy with more young workers than in a sluggish one with chronic budget deficits. Immigration isn’t what really ails them, and it isn’t what stands in the way of aiding them.

Will immigrants use those same social services, as some immigration opponents contend, adding to the cost of the nation’s welfare state? Yes, but not as often as they’ll pay into it. In 2007, the Congressional Budget Office analyzed the issue while assessing President George W. Bush’s proposed immigration reforms. It found that legalizing undocumented immigrants would increase federal revenue by $48 billion while costing only $23 billion in increased public services — and that’s before accounting for the broader economic benefits of immigration.

There are few free lunches in public policy. But taking advantage of our unique position as a country where the world’s best, brightest and hardest-working desperately want to live is surely one. In the end, economies aren’t mainly about budgets and tax codes, though Congress occasionally pretends otherwise. They’re about workers and business owners. Immigration reform is a way to get more of both.

How long is the immigration ‘line’? As long as 24 years.
Posted by Suzy Khimm
on January 31, 2013 at 10:46 am

Both President Obama and the Senate’s Gang of Eight agree: If undocumented immigrants want to get legal status, they’ll have to “get in the back of the line” of those who’ve already gone through legal channels to immigrate to this country. But what is this line? And exactly how long is it?

There’s no one line. There are many lines with wait times that vary wildly depending on the type of green card that a prospective immigrant is applying for, the number of visas available and his or her country of origin: For those applying for work visas because of their “extraordinary ability,” including high-ranking professors and international business executives, there is virtually no wait time. By contrast, a brother or sister of a U.S. citizen from the Philippines applying for a family-sponsored visas may have been waiting 24 years, as those visas have been oversubscribed, according to the State Department’s latest figures.

“There are so many different lines. It’s very hard for people to understand that there are so many different categories and that each wait time is different,” says Mary Giovagnoli, director of the Immigration Policy Council. As of November, there were 4.3 million people on the wait list for family-based visas and 113,058 waiting for employment-based visas — nearly 4.5 million in the overall backlog. (There are also about 41,000 “diversity” visas allocated to those from countries with low admission rates.)

Despite the huge demand, however, the government routinely doesn’t even give out all of the visas allocated in any given year, partly because of bureaucratic delays. According to the law, any pending visa that isn’t closed out in a given fiscal year is “lost,” and it must be counted toward the next year’s allocation, explains Angelo Paparelli, a California-based immigration lawyer at Seyfarth Shaw LLP. Democrats have been pushing to recapture the visas that were “lost” to bureaucratic delays, which could amount to hundreds of thousands of additional visas, by some estimates.

All this has created a lot of pressure to reform the legal immigration system, from employers who’ve been clamoring to hire more immigrant workers, particularly in the STEM fields, as well as from families who’ve been split apart for years. What’s more, the exceedingly long wait times have also fueled illegal immigration, either because immigrants come without authorization or overstay their visas while they wait in line.

This has led to considerable consensus between the parties about which reforms are necessary, but there’s less consensus on how, specifically, to remake the system. Both parties want to make it easier for business to hire high-skilled immigrant workers. But where President Obama also has proposed eliminating country-based caps for employment-based visas and raising the country caps for family-based visas, Republicans has been less warm to such ideas: Senate Democrats recently eliminated the proposed recapture of visas for battered women in a recent bill as a concession to Republicans, for instance. And the bipartisan Senate gang so far discusses the need to reduce the backlog only in the most general terms.

Legislators are also raising the stakes for fixing the legal immigration system by tying it directly to the fate of undocumented immigrants: Unless the line of legal immigration speeds up, the illegal immigrants will be languishing without citizenship, as well. While more resources could help cut some of the red tape slowing down the process, such measures alone wouldn’t be enough to reduce the backlog in a meaningful way, says Giovagnoli. “At some level, you can’t speed it up if Congress doesn’t have more visas.”

Immigration advocates worry that the promise of citizenship could end up being “in name only” for some undocumented immigrants. ”Instead of dying in the desert, they might just die waiting to become permanent residents,” concludes Paparelli.

A new Gallup poll finds "at least two-thirds of Americans favor each of five specific measures designed to address immigration issues -- ranging from 68% who would vote for increased government spending on security measures and enforcement at U.S. borders, to 85% who would vote for a requirement that employers verify the immigration status of all new hires. More than seven in 10 would vote for a pathway to citizenship for undocumented immigrants now living in this country."

Meanwhile, a new ABC News-Washington Post poll finds public approval of President Obama's handling of immigration has jumped to a career high "buttressed by majority support for a path to citizenship for illegal immigrants and, much more broadly, endorsement of stricter border control."

House G.O.P. Open to Residency for Illegal Immigrants
By ASHLEY PARKER
Published: February 5, 2013

WASHINGTON — House Republicans on Tuesday staked out what they cast as a middle-ground option in the debate over immigration, pushing an approach that could include legal residency but not a path to citizenship — as their Democratic counterparts favor — for the 11 million illegal immigrants already in the country.

Republicans also signaled that they are open to the idea of breaking immigration legislation into several smaller bills, which would allow them to deal with the question of highly skilled workers, as well as a farmworker program, without addressing what Democrats and immigration advocates say is the larger issue of potential citizenship. Immigration advocates favor a comprehensive measure to enable them to use elements that have bipartisan backing to build support for broader legislation.

At a House Judiciary Committee hearing exploring an overhaul of the immigration system — the first of several such hearings expected in the House — Representative Robert W. Goodlatte, Republican of Virginia and chairman of the committee, tried to frame what he called the question of the day: “Are there options that we should consider between the extremes of mass deportation and a pathway to citizenship for those not lawfully present in the United States?”

It was a question later echoed by Representative Lamar Smith, Republican of Texas and the former chairman of the committee, when questioning Mayor Julián Castro of San Antonio. “Do you see any compromise area between the current status quo and a path to citizenship for virtually all the 11 million who are illegal immigrants in the country today?” he asked.

Mr. Castro, whose twin brother, Representative Joaquín Castro, is a newly elected Democrat from Texas, said he saw the compromise as “a recognition that a path to citizenship will be earned citizenship,” meaning that illegal immigrants would be forced to learn English, and pay fines and back taxes before they could become citizens.

Representative Spencer Bachus, Republican of Alabama, turned to the question of how to approach an overhaul of the system when he said he thought the panelists could all agree that “it’s going to be a much easier lift to solve the problem of highly skilled workers.”

“When you take comprehensive, then we’re dealing with certain issues like full citizenship,” Mr. Bachus said. “And whatever else we disagree on, I think we would agree on that that’s a more toxic and contentious issue, granting full amnesty.”

But Representative Cedric L. Richmond, Democrat of Louisiana, countered that the only way to tackle immigration is through comprehensive legislation. “Why don’t we just get the skilled labor part done first?” Mr. Richmond asked. “Well, politically, and just being very practical about it, if we got the skilled labor part done first, do you think we would ever come behind it and finish the job? I think it has to be a comprehensive approach or we’ll never get to the hard part.”

Immigration advocates, who had been eagerly awaiting the hearing for an early hint of the tenor of the debate on immigration as it unfolds in the House, said the use of the word “amnesty” would most likely be a bad sign for those in favor of a comprehensive overhaul.

Representative John Conyers Jr., Democrat of Michigan, tried to set the tone early — “I hope no one uses the term ‘illegal immigrants’ here today,” he said in his opening remarks. But the a-word, as immigration advocates have called “amnesty,” came up twice. In addition to Mr. Bachus, Representative Trey Gowdy, Republican of South Carolina, also used the phrase: “This is not our country’s first foray into amnesty.” He expressed concern for “respect for the rule of law.”

Meanwhile, Representative Eric Cantor of Virginia, the No. 2 House Republican, used a speech on his legislative priorities beyond the fights over deficit reduction to try to soften his party’s position on immigration. Speaking at a research group downtown, he explicitly embraced offering illegal immigrants brought to the United States as children a pathway to legal residency and citizenship, a position he had opposed. And he endorsed in broad terms a comprehensive overhaul of the nation’s immigration laws.

“I’m pleased these discussions make border security, employment verification and creating a workable guest worker program an immediate priority. It’s the right thing to do for our families, for our security, and for our economy,” Mr. Cantor said. But he warned, “There are some who would rather avoid fixing the problem in order to save this as a political issue.”

Representative Raúl R. Labrador, Republican of Idaho, also challenged immigration advocates on the question of a political versus policy victory.

“If we want a political solution, you guys are going to insist on a pathway to citizenship,” he said. “You’re going to beat Republicans over the head on this issue. But if we want a policy solution, I think there’s good will here in the House of Representatives for us to come together, actually pass a pragmatic solution to the current problem that we have, and solve and modernize the immigration system for years to come.”

In a flurry of immigration legislation offered in recent days in the House, a bipartisan group of lawmakers, led by Representative Jerrold Nadler, Democrat of New York, introduced a bill on Tuesday that would allow American citizens with foreign-born same-sex spouses or partners to obtain permanent resident visas, known as green cards, for them. Mr. Nadler’s proposal would allow a well-established same-sex couple to apply for a green card, avoiding any direct challenge to a federal law that bans recognition of gay marriage.

By 49 to 43 percent, slightly more Americans now approve than disapprove of Obama on immigration. In July, Obama was deep underwater, with just 38 percent offering positive ratings and 52 percent negative.

Even after the shift, though, Obama’s immigration marks continue to trail his overall approval rating, which stood at 55 percent in a January Post-ABC poll.

In addition, two key elements of current reform discussions receive even broader support than Obama: 83 percent support stricter border security, and 55 percent back a path to citizenship for illegal immigrants.

So is the poll just another indicator of Obama’s post-election bounce, or is something deeper afoot in attitudes about immigration? The poll finds evidence for both claims.

Obama’s overall job approval rating received a five-percentage-point bump since October, and there is little reason to believe immigration played much of a role in driving that up, given the fact that the “fiscal cliff” negotiations and gun control dominated the political zeitgeist from November to early January.

But perhaps most noteworthy is that fact that Obama’s solid-but-not-spectacular ratings mark a major change in how Americans have rated recent presidents — Republican or Democrat — on immigration. George W. Bush’s approval ratings on immigration ranged from just 29 percent to 34 percent in Post-ABC polls from 2004 to 2007, and Bill Clinton earned just a 28 percent approval on immigration in a 1994 USA Today/CNN/Gallup poll, after which pollsters stopped asking that question.

The paltry assessments appear to be rooted in a long-running dissatisfaction with the federal government’s handling of illegal immigration. Three-quarters of Americans said the U.S. is “not doing enough” to stop illegal immigration in a 2010 Post-ABC poll, a result consistent with polling since 2005. It’s no surprise, then, that 83 percent in the new poll support stricter border control to reduce illegal immigration, with 64 percent supporting this “strongly.”

Obama clearly tried to tap into this vein of opinion in a speech last week, touting a drop in illegal border crossings and record high deportations of criminals during his presidency.

In addition, most Americans support what has been the biggest obstacle to immigration reform — offering a pathway to citizenship for illegal immigrants living in the U.S.

While Americans tilt positive on that issue — 55 percent support a path to citizenship while 41 percent are opposed — the bigger motivator for lawmakers may be the idea’s popularity among Hispanics. More than eight in 10 Hispanics support a pathway to citizenship, while just 15 percent are opposed.

Obama won Hispanic voters by nearly 3 to 1 over Mitt Romney in November, but Republicans are hopeful they can connect on other issues once they deal with immigration reform.

As the debate begins, Obama appears to be already earning credit from Hispanics; 67 percent approve of him on immigration issues, while 23 percent disapprove.

The Post-ABC poll was conducted Jan. 30 to Feb. 3 among a random national sample of 1,038 adults. The margin of sampling error for the full survey is plus or minus 3.5 percentage points. Click here to see full results and interactive breakdowns.

Immigration reform is back on the table, reviving debates about whether immigration is good or bad for American-born workers.

There are a lot of competing studies (and pundits) out there, but the general takeaway from conservative and liberal economists is that immigration is good for Americans’ living standards over the long run. That’s because immigrants raise the wages of native-born workers (and also lower the cost of immigrant-dense services like child care and cleaning).

As a result, immigration creates new job opportunities for the native-born, with some particularly high-profile examples found in Silicon Valley. According to a Kauffman Foundation study, of the engineering and technology companies founded in the United States from 2006 to 2012, 24.3 percent had at least one key founder who was foreign-born. In Silicon Valley alone, this number was 43.9 percent. Even outside of Silicon Valley, entrepreneurship rates are higher for the foreign-born than the native-born, and start-ups are the greatest source of American job growth.

Academic research suggests that, over all, immigrants create modest but positive average wage increases from 0.1 percent to 0.6 percent for American workers, according to Michael Greenstone and Adam Looney, both of the Hamilton Project.

There is some disagreement about whether the wage benefits of immigration are evenly distributed among all workers, though.

The chart below was created by the Hamilton Project and is based on this 2008 study. It shows the results of two different economic models designed to estimate the effect that immigration from 1990 to 2006 is likely to have had on wages for American workers (after adjusting for inflation).

The purple bars represent estimates based on research by George Borjas and Lawrence Katz, and show that immigration may have lowered the wages of American-born high school dropouts by 4.7 percent and those of college-educated workers by 1.7 percent. The blue bars show the results of a different model, created by Gianmarco I.P. Ottaviano and Giovanni Peri, that finds that all educational groups likely benefited to some small degree.

“Been there, done that,” said Rep. Xavier Becerra (D-Calif.), the chairman of the House Democratic caucus and a top party leader on immigration. “We’ve moved on. I think the American people have moved on.”

In a wide-ranging policy address on Tuesday, Cantor backed the principles behind the DREAM Act, which would grant legal status and a path to citizenship to young immigrants who were brought to the U.S. illegally as children by their parents.

“One of the great founding principles of our country was that children would not be punished for the mistakes of their parents,” Cantor said in his speech. “It is time to provide an opportunity for legal residence and citizenship for those who were brought to this country as children and who know no other home.”

The legislation was a top Democratic priority as recently as two years ago, but after President Obama offered protection from deportation for many so-called “dreamers” in 2012 through executive action, the party has shifted to a push for a comprehensive immigration overhaul.

Speaking at the party’s annual retreat about an hour’s drive from Washington, Becerra said “it’s great that our Republican colleagues are catching up,” but he insisted they go further. “So I hope that they’re going to put on fast forward on the Republican side when it comes to dealing with immigration reform,” Becerra said. “If the playing field for them is, ‘DREAM Act is a good idea,’ that’s yesterday’s news.”

While the DREAM Act is expected to be included in any broad reform, the caucus vice chairman, Rep. Joseph Crowley (N.Y.), said the president’s action last year had largely resolved the issue. “The heavy-lifting was done by the president, and somehow my Republican colleagues want to take credit for what was done already,” he said.

Still, both Becerra and Crowley said they were encouraged by the willingness of Republican leaders to consider more comprehensive reform. The Democrats had a panel on the issue on Wednesday, and it is expected to be a prime topic of discussion throughout their retreat.

Or maybe the rich business owners could quit giving them jobs without green cards....

or those guys who make false documents would could quit making them so the rich business owners dont hire them.

__________________Ephesians 2:8-10

English Standard Version (ESV)

8 For by grace you have been saved through faith. And this is not your own doing; it is the gift of God, 9 not a result of works, so that no one may boast. 10 For we are his workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand, that we should walk in them.

McCain Goes After Conservative Opponents Of Immigration Reform: ‘What Do You Want To Do?’
By Igor Volsky
on Feb 10, 2013 at 10:00 am

During an appearance on Fox News Sunday, Sen. John McCain (R-AZ) responded to critics of the bipartisan immigration principles developed by eight senators and pushed back against conservatives who argue that undocumented immigrants should not be granted a legal status until the borders are completely secure.

Under the bipartisan agreement, unauthorized immigrants who pass a background check can qualify for probationary status as soon as reform becomes law, but can only achieve permanent legal status (and eventual citizenship) once the borders are certified as secure by the Department of Homeland Security. McCain explained that the principles he helped develop are fair and would require immigrants to pay substantial fines and back taxes if they want to attain legal status:

Quote:

CHRIS WALLACE (HOST): Under your plan, though [undocumented immigrants] wouldn’t get the path to citizenship until you got the border enforcement certification, they would almost immediately gate what is called “probationary legal status” which means they can continue to live in this country legally. Some of your critics on the right are saying that is amnesty.

McCAIN: Well, I don’t think it is amnesty to start with. Second of all, what do you want to do with them? That is the question in response and third of all, it is a tough path to citizenship, you have to pay back tax and learn English and have to have a clear record and get to the back of the line behind to the people who have come here legally or waiting legally. So, I just reject that.

Conservative pundits like Laura Ingraham and Charles Krauthammer, and conservative members of the House have led the charge in demanding that the borders be secured before unauthorized immigrants can come out of the shadows and work legally. However, as Sen. Marco Rubio (R-FL) — on of the leaders of the group of eigh — explained, doing so would only encourage a rush of immigration, as more will try to come into the country under the deadline.

House Majority Leader Eric Cantor (R-Va.) said Sunday that Congress should begin to address immigration reform by looking at legislation to legalize those brought to the U.S. children.

"The best place to begin I think is with the children. Let's go ahead and get that under our belt, put a win on the board so we can promise a better life for those kids who are here due to no fault of their own," Cantor said on NBC’s “Meet The Press.”

Cantor said sounded an optimistic note on the prospects for immigration reform, saying that here is "a lot of movement" in both chambers of Congress. He added that it was important to "balance" the need for heightened border security with compassion towards those who are here illegally.

But Cantor cautioned that Congress should first move forward by dealing with undocumented children, rather than waiting to address with immigration in a comprehensive package.

When asked if that meant he supported the DREAM Act, Cantor said he didn't know the current status of the bill, but said he supported its underlying principles.

Senate Majority Whip Dick Durbin (D-Ill.), the architect of the DREAM Act and one of the bipartisan "gang of eight" senators pushing a framework for comprehensive immigration reform, disagreed with Cantor's approach during a later appearance on the show.

"The DREAM Act means more to me than I can express. I've met these young people. But they will tell you, 'Yes I want a future, but what about my mom and dad.' They understand full well that these family structures are critically important to the future of America," Durbin said. "In the Senate we have a bipartisan goal of a pathway to citizenship. Not stopping at the DREAM Act, beginning at the DREAM Act and pushing forward."

Durbin also pointed out that Cantor had opposed the DREAM Act repeatedly since Durbin introduced it 12 years ago.

Cantor had voted against DREAM Act legislation in the past, but last week he said he supported those measures in a speech geared toward rebranding the GOP’s image.

I'm late to the party here, but isn't there zero immigration now into the USA since Obama took over the economy?

At any rate we don't have to "do" anything with illegal immigrants. They don't have to leave, nor do they have to be legalized. Why do we need to "do" anything at all? Is there some reason why action must be taken? Is action needed to benefit me or my family?

Because I fail to see how anything here would impact me or my family and since that's the case, why "solve" it?

I'm late to the party here, but isn't there zero immigration now into the USA since Obama took over the economy?

Link?

Quote:

Originally Posted by Prison Bitch

At any rate we don't have to "do" anything with illegal immigrants. They don't have to leave, nor do they have to be legalized. Why do we need to "do" anything at all? Is there some reason why action must be taken? Is action needed to benefit me or my family?

Because I fail to see how anything here would impact me or my family and since that's the case, why "solve" it?

Because, and I could be wrong about this, there is more to the country than you and your family.

I thought "all politics is local"? Guess not. I am still wondering how amnesty benefits me. Does it? The only thing I can see good or bad about it is it adds millions of poor Democrat voters to the election role. Therefore I'd surmise that the 49.7% of Americans who voted Rwpublican in their local House vote would be damaged by it.